Sometimes you want to create different versions or configurations of an object or scene. Like a room with different sets of curtains, a truck with different trailers or just alternative light setups for a scene (e.g. day, evening, night).
Of course, you could do this with XPresso, creating User Data entries for all your options, connecting lots of nodes to check for the parameters and the visibility values of all lots of hierarchy branches... and if you added another curtain to your room, or another trailer to your truck, you would have to worry about wiring the new objects, too, and updating all the User Data entries.
SwitchObject makes this really easy for you: No Xpresso, no User Data, no takes, just straight forward switching of object groups.
SwitchObject 2 is a Python rewrite of my classic C++ plugin SwitchObject. SwitchObject 2 does things in a cleaner way, the code is more compact, and it's platform independent.
Unpack the ZIP archive, and copy the contained folder to /Maxon/Cinema 4D/plugins. Then (re)start Cinema 4D.
If you leave this link box empty, SwitchObject will switch between its own child objects. Simply use SwitchObject as a parent for a group of objects, and you're ready to go.
If you link an object here, SwitchObject will switch between that linked object's children. That way, you can have your SwitchObjects clearly laid out at the top of your scene hierarchy, and have it work on groups of objects that are buried deep in your scene hierarchy.
Any objects available for switching will appear in this dropdown. Select one of them, and it will be set visible for editor and rendering display. The other objects in the group will be switched off.
If "Parent Link" is empty, the names of SwitchObject's children will be listed here. If anything is linked in "Parent Link", the linked object's children will be listed here.
If this option is active, SwitchObject will be automatically renamed according to the currently active object in the group.
Written by Frank Willeke
www.frankwilleke.de
Released as open source under GPL3 license.